Paid Staff Can Hamper Spiritual Growth
There are certain common refrains I hear as I’m talking with growing churches across the country. This is one of them. I’ve heard many leaders in recent months acknowledge that they’re trying to shift the ministry to volunteers rather than continuing to hire more staff. Likely, the economic challenges have precipitated that shift in strategy. Whatever the case, I think it’s a good thing.
Today, over on MinistryStrategies.com, Eric Geiger offered this thought as is relates engaging volunteers in ministry. He explains how pastors and other paid staff may actually be hampering spiritual growth by holding on to ministry:
“People who are gifted by God and called to serve Him are put on the bench as they watch the professional ministers make the ministry happen. Instead of fostering a serving posture among believers, this kind of “ministry” develops consumers. By keeping ministry from the majority of the people, they are taught to be moochers and consumers of the faith rather than participators and contributors. As their spiritual gifts go underutilized, they miss the joy of experiencing Christ by serving others.”
Wondering where your church stands on this topic? Do a little math. Take the number of people who volunteer somewhere in ministry at any given time each month. Divide that by the total number of students and adults at your church. That’ll give you a percentage. Here’s my suggestion:
- If the percentage of students and adults serving is over 45%, you are in a healthy range for engaging volunteers in ministry.
- If you are in the 30% to 45% range, you’re doing okay but there’s room for improvement.
- If you are under 30%, you need a volunteer strategy adjustment.
Now, I can hear the critics and skeptics already. You’re probably thinking, “The larger a church gets, the more likely they are to have a big staff team handling the ministry of the church.” It might surprise you to learn I see the direct opposite. For whatever reason, smaller churches I work with have a tendency to rely on the pastors and paid staff to carry the ministry load. In fact, the highest percentage I’ve ever seen (close to 60%), comes from Granger Community Church — a church of several thousand people.
Check out the rest of Eric’s article on this topic. If you’re interested in coaching on how to improve your volunteer strategy, contact our team at MinistryStrategy.com. We’d love to help.
I heard a video teaching from Andy Stanley, in which he spoke of succession, leadership “success’ is found in succession of raising another leader. I have seen larger churches spend a lot more time in leadership development, people development because the needs are greater, the vision is larger, it allows for more opportunities. The smaller churches do have the trend to internalize this and keep most of the roles and responsibility within the staff positions, in turn not allowing volunteers to ‘grow” within the church. I could almost due a sub-blog just commenting on this, great post. True stuff.
M_
This is obviously a statement made in overall generalization, but I agree with that generalization. The more the body is acting as the body the more the actual church COMMUNITY is effecting the people around them. The more we have a lazy body with a talkative head the more we can talk to a culture around us rather then interact with that culture.
Good article. Thanks for the thought.
I do support the idea of less paid staff, but I also struggle with terminology used by churches today for “volunteers”. We still seem to want to delineate between the Professional and the Lay and for what reason? I’m all for leadership development, but it kind of grates me when I hear the staff refer to us as “their rocking volunteers”. We don’t volunteer ministry for them, though we love them, we do it for the kingdom and our King. We are all part of the Church, and some are equipped for “Sunday ministry” (paid and unpaid), and others are equipped for being witnesses in our jobs, families and friends. Why has church in 2010 turned into being about doing everything we can Mon-Sat to get people to Sunday service (thus needing many, many “volunteers” for Sunday)? When will our Church leaders lead us in ways we can minister to those in need the whole week long? Though the job of the Teaching Pastor may not be “waiting tables”, it seems that the majority of funds collected went to specifically that and not to the Sunday service and salaries. Maybe the real question for the local Church is not so much shifting from “paid” to volunteer”, but what church leadership looks like…